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All posts for the month April, 2014

This is a continuation of Green State TV’s short and sweet ‘GMO Mythbusting’ video series with plant geneticist Dr. Kevin Folta. Personally, I feel this is an especially good little vignette and well worth watching.

I have a high regard for Dr. Folta, as he once took the time to talk with me in detail about GMOs. The experience was so profound that I went from being scared of transgenic technology to understanding its value and potential. The entire journey unfolds here on this blog.

Below is a direct quote from Part 5 titled ‘Independent Scientists’ – words that quite aptly speak to the near constant anti-GMO accusation that anyone speaking in favor of GMOs must be an industry shill [1] – must certainly be under gag orders to never say anything negative about the technology nor expose the studies done ‘in secret’ regarding all the supposed health and environmental concerns. Folta also exposes the myth that certain DNA is held under lock and key by the industry and not available for sequencing.

Please anti-GMO crowd, the shill accusation thing is such a tired argument, and so utterly false! Consider the points Folta emphasizes in the quotes below. Bold emphasis is mine.

If one of the companies did something that […] was not right or unethical, I’d throw them under the bus in a heartbeat. That’s the beauty of being an independent university scientist – nobody owns me. […] I can do whatever I want. Nobody, there’s not a company on this planet that’s going to tell me what I can research and I can’t research. There’s not a company on this planet that can tell me what I can sequence and what I can’t and they’re not going to tell me what I can and can’t go public with, with respect to information. If there’s something that they’re doing that needs to be uncovered and talked about, I’ll talk about it. This is where all of us public scientists are. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to be that resource that the public can count on and trust as its intermediate.

Folta goes on to say the following:

Among public scientists there is absolutely no debate about the efficacy and safety of GM technology. If you go across any scientific organization, any one of our big societies, there is virtually a unanimous buy in that this is really good technology that needs to be promoted.

I don’t know how much more clear a person can be. I guess if you’re a non-scientist as I am, it boils down to whom to trust. Public scientists like Folta make college professor salaries and are not in a position to reap huge financial gains as GMOs continue to flood the market. Folta and his university colleagues worldwide are not Monsanto, not DuPont nor any of the other multi-nationals. They speak in favor of GMOs as a valuable tool because it’s what they study, what they know, what they do, and what they believe has potential now and for the future of food on planet Earth. Yes, they are contracted and funded for private research projects from time to time but these projects are a matter of public record and do not make up the bulk of what they do.

Let us not forget that university scientists are also teachers!

~Julee K/Sleuth4Health

email: sleuth4health@gmail.com

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[1] I have personally been accused of being paid by Monsanto on several occasions. After writing an article about touring a Monsanto facility while visiting Hawaii, it was said that they must have paid for my vacation. I can only say this – I wish!

Maybe, just maybe, people speak in favor of GMOs simply because they see value in them.

Ahh, a blogger’s dream – to find an attractive and informative graphic you wish you were awesome enough to have made yourself but that is thankfully available to use under a creative commons/attribution license. That means you can post said graphic on your blog with no fear of being hunted down by the copyright police as long as you follow proper procedures.

Yay!

These days most regular folks appear to get their science news in the form of internet articles and blog posts so it is probably prudent to develop some sound discernment skills regarding the scientific claims in the articles we read. How many of us are willing to sift through long, dry, exhaustive research reports? And even if we were willing, would we understand the hard data we were looking at? Would we even make it past the abstract? It is a sad fact that a large portion of the population of otherwise educated folks, myself included, is incapable of distinguishing good science from bad.

Please read on for an analogy that I think might help shed light on this matter.

Let’s look at the art of calligraphy – kalos graphos – beautiful writing. You know – the flowing hand scripts or prints created with a flat edged pen dipped in ink. The special writing device required for this aesthetically pleasing text was originally carved from a large quill feather. In modern times, the separate metal pen tip is referred to as a ‘nib’ and in the last several decades, all-in-one broad-edged pens and felt-tip markers have made calligraphy for the masses a snap – or have they?

I took a few calligraphy classes in high school and college [1]. This experience instilled in me a lifelong love and appreciation for calligraphy. I even won a national contest once and my work was displayed in a local gallery. With a quick eye-balling, I know good calligraphy from bad. There is a LOT of bad calligraphy out there. In fact, much of what you see in neighborhood craft fairs or on art-for-sale websites is pretty darn bad but people don’t know any better and think it is good. I think in many cases the creator of the calligraphy also believes it’s good. Maybe he or she was never trained or trained poorly. Pick up pen, dip in ink, put on beautiful parchment paper = good.

The problem is simple: they don’t have a trained eye.

People have to be trained to appreciate or understand a lot of things in both the arts and sciences: fine food and wine, classical music, jazz, metamorphic rocks, algae, algorithms, boxplots, wave mechanics, binary numbers – and the list goes on and on.

If it seems I’m digressing a lot, I’m really not. All of this ties in.

So, before going any further, I should also mention that I had another idea for a post today. In my twitter feed I saw something about coffee being jam packed full of carcinogens but who really cares because there is a study of lab animals showing that carcinogens are everywhere, chemicals are everywhere and that it’s the dosage, not the substance itself, that turns everyday exposures into toxins.

In other words, we come into contact with “dangerous” chemicals and potential carcinogens every day. No big whoop.

So, anyway, I saw this tweet about coffee – you can look at it here – and it helped me plan this post.

Another tweeter happened to ask if there was an online reference for this information and the first tweeter posted two links. Both of the links were to long science reports that covered much more than just the chemicals and carcinogens in coffee. For the likes of little ol’ non-scientist me, that’s a lot to get through for a single post. I may still do it, but it won’t be today. In other words, sometimes I want something easier and faster, like an article written in layman’s terms. But I want it to be grounded in evidence. The last thing I want to post is psuedo-science crap! Those days are behind me.

That’s why I love Twitter so much. Check back often. Sooner or later you’ll find something not too long, not too short, not too complicated, not too dumbed down – something just right.

My sincere thanks to Compound Interest/compoundchem.com for the graphic above. Please visit this blog – it attempts to demystify chemicals. I will now be a regular visitor!

Julee K/Sleuth4Health

email sleuth4health@gmail.com

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* In order to fit the entire graphic in so it was readable, I had to break it up into smaller pieces.

[1] All of my instruction in calligraphy originated within a group of instructors trained by Lloyd Reynolds and later, Robert Palladino of Reed College. Palladino was the calligraphy guru (also later a priest) behind the design inspirations of Apple’s legendary Steve Jobs. Here is a short video about Palladino and his teachings called The Calligraphy Heritage at Reed.

These mini-interviews with Dr. Kevin Folta put out by Greenstate TV are short, sweet and to the point – one point per video. Considering our shrinking attention spans these days, this approach is just about perfect.